TAMPA—Step by step, the process by which Steven Stamkos shoots the puck evolves into a marvelous melding of sight and sound. He swings his stick in a perfect half moon, and at the moment the blade strikes the puck, there is a small pock, a noise as if someone has punched through a thin sheet of Styrofoam.

During a competition before this year's NHL All-Star Game, Stamkos, whose Tampa Bay Lightning play the Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, had his slap shot clocked at 101.9 mph, the fastest of any forward. Earlier this month, after Stamkos, the league's leading goal-scorer, ripped a wrist shot over the shoulder of Philadelphia Flyers goaltender Brian Boucher, Boucher summed up the goal to his friend Simon Gagne in two words: "That's sick."

"He roofed it like it was nothing," said Gagne, who played 10 years for the Flyers before joining the Lightning this season. "I don't remember seeing a guy who's able to be that dangerous every time he's taking a shot."

In the comparative obscurity of playing hockey in a southern city and in the shadows cast by Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby and Washington's Alexander Ovechkin, Stamkos has 41 goals and 78 points through 61 games for Tampa Bay—a team that, after missing the playoffs each of the last three years, is in first place in the Southeast Division. With Crosby out of action since suffering a concussion on Jan. 5 and with Ovechkin in the midst of a subpar season—he has just 24 goals—Stamkos enters Sunday's game having assumed the role of the NHL's greatest offensive attraction.

He has done so by wielding what Lightning captain Vincent Lecavalier calls "the best shot in hockey," though aside from the league's cognoscenti and its most devoted followers, few know he possesses such a gift. Its source is his sheer athleticism.

A three-inch growth spurt when he was 15 stretched him out to 6-foot-1 and helped him add muscle mass as he aged. "He has a long, froggy body," Tampa Bay head coach Guy Boucher said. Boucher, who studied biosystems engineering as an undergraduate at McGill University in Montreal, said that Stamkos's wrists and forearms are exceptionally strong, his hand-to-eye coordination "incredible."

It was also common during Stamkos's years with his junior team, the Markham Waxers of the Ontario Hockey League, to see him "batting pucks out of the air like he's got a lacrosse stick in his hands," said Paul Titanic, the Waxers' coach. "He's really a genius when it comes to physical coordination. If there's a bouncing puck around the net, and 99 out of 100 guys are going to flub it into the goalie's pads, he finds a way to lift it into the top of the net."

That ability proved particularly helpful to Brad Lott, the Lightning's executive vice president of sales and marketing, as the team prepared to make Stamkos the league's No.1 overall draft pick in 2008. Lott and his staff scoured the Internet for videos of Stamkos, cobbled them together, and launched SeenStamkos.com, a site where fans could watch a succession of his highlights.

"There was one at a fun shootout competition where he picked the puck up on his stick, whipped it around behind his head and kept the puck on his stick while he was skating down the ice," Lott said. "He does a 360 and throws it in the net. This goalie's standing there like, 'What just happened?'"

That the Lightning regards Stamkos as the fulcrum of the franchise is clear. He is scheduled to become a restricted free agent once this season ends, and general manager Steve Yzerman said that signing Stamkos to a long-term contract is "a priority." (Don Meehan, Stamkos's agent, declined to comment on the negotiations.)

Yet even here, Stamkos remains relatively anonymous among the public at large. As of late last week, Stamkos's No. 91 uniform was just the 38th-best-selling player jersey on NHL.com, according to the league.

He turned 21 earlier this month, and he wanted his first night as an alcohol-eligible adult in the United States to be low key. He had a game the next day. So to celebrate his birthday, Stamkos went to a downtown Tampa restaurant with his father, Chris, and teammate Steve Downie and dined without interruption. The other diners either didn't recognize him or were gracious enough not to bother him.

"My friends who play in Toronto, they can't even go for dinner or go to the mall," Stamkos said. "They get mobbed. For us down here, we're starting to get recognized, but not too many people are going to come up to you. It's not a bad thing."

That Tampa is a relatively tranquil hockey market might have been the best thing for Stamkos's development. After the Lightning drafted him in '08, he had only seven goals in his first 51 games. His confidence was at low ebb. Had he been playing in Montreal, Detroit, or another city where his profile as a ballyhooed rookie would have been higher, the pressure on him to produce might have been stifling. In Tampa, it wasn't.

Stamkos righted himself, scoring 16 goals over the final 28 games of his rookie season, then tying Crosby for the league lead in goals last year with 51. (Ovechkin had 50.)

"It's the perfect environment to grow," said Lecavalier, himself a former No. 1 overall pick by the Lightning, who has spent his entire 12-year NHL career here. "When things don't go as well, you don't have 30 microphones pointed at you. That makes slumps easier."

But selling Stamkos on staying in Tampa may be easier than opening him up to a broader audience. Lott t is trying, though. He said there are five billboards featuring Stamkos in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area. One of the most prominent stands on the west side of Interstate 275 and is easily visible as drivers cruise south along the highway from downtown Tampa. The billboard, in fact, is positioned just a few miles north of the city's airport, as if its goal were to help visitors and residents remember Stamkos, to give them a good long look at an oft-invisible superstar, before they left town.

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